To whit, although I was fired for “incompetence”, here are the top three things I created/did during my near decade service with my country’s government.

1} I wrote a citizenship test that caught applicants trying to cheat their way past the process. Understand that if an applicant has been a “green card” [I-551] holder for ≥ 20 years, then the requirement to speak English is officially waived. This allows them to have translator present during the exam. Now, I quickly realized the translator would feed the applicant answers or outright lie for them, claiming they’d given the correct answer when they did not. Now, there were – at the time – a pool of 100 questions, of which I was permitted to choose only 10. Thus, to beat the cheats, I asked questions that had only English names as answers. I failed so many this way, my bosses told me to stop failing them if they were fed less than three answers.

2} When swearing in applicants at the beginning of the process, I gave directions with words but remained perfectly still. Few people realize just how much body language is the primary means of exchanging information. I failed innumerable applicants unable to speak English (and not exempt the requirement) simply by asking “Raise your right hand” prior to my doing so. So many, in fact, that my first-line supervisor stole the technique to speed through his interviews.

3} Prior to those techniques, I was a “badge and gun” officer that briefly questioned those entering the USA via aircraft. Bosses and lawyers would pick apart reasons we front-line officers had for stopping them. So, adapting my training to the pedanticism, I invented the phrase “stress-indicative, non-verbal communication” (to laymen, this means “the person in question was acting suspicious”). Thus, giving bullet-proof articulation to my memos. Within a month, all the dedicated officers at my duty station adopted it.

While this isn’t a technique, I feel I should mention:

Officers would look forward to me questioning suspects.

Why?

Because, far more often than not, I’d catch a good one.

In fact, one fellow officer [a former border patrol agent] used to get a shit-eating grin on his face when he’d see me and say:

“Alright! [Spadille], is here! Time for [an illegal] to get sent home!”